Why the Old Testament Matters: Intro to the Major and Minor Prophets

Why the Old Testament Matters: Intro to the Major and Minor Prophets

f you have been following along with us throughout our Old Testament series, congratulations, you are in the home stretch. The final section of the Old Testament is the Prophets, which is divided into two subsections, known as the Major Prophets and the Minor Prophets. If you have ever read through the Bible in order and made it this far, you have read through list after list of ancient law codes, ritual purity standards, and sacrificial regulations in the Torah, lengthy historical narratives and genealogies in the History books, and ancient poetry and riddles in the Wisdom books. However, this section, the Prophets, may have been the most confusing and hardest to get anything out of yet! If you have felt that before, there is nothing to be ashamed of; without understanding the context, these books can be very confusing! So, let’s unpack exactly what is going on here.

For starters, it is important to note that the Prophets are not set chronologically after the History and Wisdom books; on the contrary, they were written at the same time as those! If you pay attention, you may see many of the prophets mentioned by name throughout 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles. And, even if they are not mentioned by name, most of the prophets were writing in response to the events that occur in those earlier books.

If you go to one of these books looking for a rhyming riddle or poem about some important event that is about to happen, you are not going to find what you are looking for. What is there, however, is far more valuable than knowing what will happen tomorrow.

It is also important to explain what is meant by Major versus Minor, as it can be a little misleading. It is not that the Major Prophets are more important than the Minor Prophets but, rather, the title is simply based on the physical length of the books. The five books that are considered Major Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, and Daniel) would have each been written down on their own scroll, whereas the 12 books that are considered Minor Prophets were all stored on one scroll (because of this, the Minor Prophets are also sometimes referred to as The Book of the 12). All 17 of these books are equally worth reading; some of them just take a little more time to read than others.

Another thing that can be confusing is what is meant by the words “prophet” and “prophecy.” In the Bible, prophecy typically refers to “forth-telling” rather than “foretelling”—that is to say, typically, the prophets are relaying God’s truth to His people, telling them what God wants them to hear, and often calling them to repentance, rather than just telling the future. That being said, they do sometimes talk about future events, but even then, it is typically as a warning of what will happen if those hearing do not repent from their sins and turn back to God. If you go to one of these books looking for a rhyming riddle or poem about some important event that is about to happen, you are not going to find what you are looking for. What is there, however, is far more valuable than knowing what will happen tomorrow.

The mode in which this information is communicated varies a lot from book to book, and sometimes even within each book. These books often take the form of letters, sermons, and poems, all of which respond to either specific events (Lamentations directly responds to the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon) or to cultural sins (Hosea compares the widespread idol worship of the Israelites to adultery and prostitution). A few of these even relay narratives about the prophets in similar fashion to the History books, like Jonah and portions of Daniel.

Now that you know what the Prophetic books are and what they are doing, let’s talk about why they are important. At first, it may not seem like reading responses to ancient catastrophes and sins is beneficial. You are probably not making sacrifices to pagan gods, and your nation probably was not just invaded and defeated by another country. But all of these books share some very important commonalities that make them critically important for Christians to read. These books all pave the way for Jesus. Some of them do this pretty directly, like Isaiah and Zechariah, by explicitly talking about a coming Savior and ways to recognize Him (there are over 400 prophecies that Jesus fulfills, most of which are contained in these books). The rest of them do this more indirectly by pointing out how great our need for a savior is.

Hopefully, this article helps explain the importance of the Prophets and makes them less intimidating. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to the rest of our series on why the Old Testament matters, be sure to go back and check it out. 

The articles are available on our website, experiencecc.com, and the podcasts are available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you listen. Be sure to subscribe so you can catch our next articles as we break down a few of the prophetic books in greater detail.